


Coming

by rinnya



Series: This is how it starts. [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Brainwashing, Character Death, Drowning, Electrocution, Gen, Gun Violence, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, References to Depression, Self-Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 09:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14668623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinnya/pseuds/rinnya
Summary: The Winter Soldier drags Steve out of the Potomac.Originally Chapter 12 of "This is how it starts", can be read as a stand-alone fic as it is a one-shot AU of the original fic that I decided to publish independently.(“I thought he was going to finish the mission,” Natasha says, much much later, “He’d never-, I don’t-,” she pauses, then, “he’d never failed .”“Not even once?” Sam leans forward, knees brushing, hands clasped.Natasha thinks of the end of a pistol, pressed under her chin, metal finger at the trigger, words of Russian tongue, chapped lips, cold floors, new names and new faces, then she thinks of blond hair, large hands, a shield, cold water, and falling.“Twice,” she says.)





	Coming

**Author's Note:**

> The original AU was extremely fluffy and mild, but THIS IS NOTHING LIKE THAT. Please heed warnings!
> 
> Warnings/Mentions: drowning, attempted suicide (self-inflicted gunshots, hanging, electrocution), brainwashing, character death.  
> 

**An AU.**

They don’t see it coming, is the thing.

Natasha knows, the moment Steve goes down, drops like a rock, then sinks like a stone - Natasha knows it, knows that he’s not going to come back up.

She doesn’t -

It’s not the first time Steve plunges into icy water, but it won’t be the first time Steve dies - drowns, and drowning is painful, (and Natasha remembers burning in her lungs and scratching at the lid of a door and blood from her broken nails against rusted hinges,)

She doesn’t scream. She breaks the neck of the man whose head is between her thighs, and shoots another through the forehead, and her eyes track the pinprick of a silhouette of a man falling and falling and falling and-

The splash the body makes, she thinks, is like a period at the end of a sentence, of a story. One that spans a century and yet seems far too short.

But, they don’t see it coming, is the thing - not Fury who has his hands clasped so tightly together that his knuckles are white, not Maria who has her head bowed and fists clenched on the control panel, not Sam who is picking himself up at the edge of the Potomac.

Natasha doesn’t see it coming.

The second splash, twisted flesh and metal, The Winter Soldier like a bullet from a gun.

Natasha breaks into a run.

\--

(“I thought he was going to finish the mission,” Natasha says, much much later, “He’d never-, I don’t-,” she pauses, then, “he’d never failed .”

“Not even once?” Sam leans forward, knees brushing, hands clasped.

Natasha thinks of the end of a pistol, pressed under her chin, metal finger at the trigger, words of Russian tongue, chapped lips, cold floors, new names and new faces, then she thinks of blond hair, large hands, a shield, cold water, and falling.

“Twice,” she says.)

\--

The Winter Soldier stands at the bank, wet hair clinging to his face,  metal wrapped around Steve’s neck, holding him like a marionette from strings.

Natasha has her pistols drawn, and she feels Clint before she sees him, his thumb on a bowstring pulled taut. She hasn’t seen him in three months, and he curls into her space, fits like a puzzle piece, angle shifting to cover her blind spot.

The Winter Soldier drops Steve like a rag doll, and he hits the ground solidly, unlike onto the water. His head lolls to the side, arms limp and splayed, muck and blood on his face, where the hair is matted.

He’s alive.

The Winter Soldier stares at her, cold, (and Natasha doesn’t think of the warmth that his touch used to have,) and Natasha says, “stand down, Soldier.”

\--

They don’t see him coming, is the thing.   

There’s a creak of a window and a rustling of sheets, and Sam looks up.

The Winter Soldier is there, fingers pressed to dusty corners and clammy skin, scruffed edge of a boot propped by the windowsill, metal digits tugging lightly at hospital covers.

Sam watches the Soldier, who tilts his head to look straight at him, haunting, assessing, then back down to where Steve is lying, eyes closed, lashes dipped, breathing slowly.

Natasha pauses outside the room, hands resting on the doorframe, considering. Sam doesn’t turn around to look at her, and Natasha doesn’t say a single word, and he feels her presence retreats and hears the click of heels against tiles grow softer.

Sam knows he hears her leave, only because she wants him to.

The Soldier looks up again, at where Sam has his hand on Steve’s, and Sam almost pulls away, but keeps his hand there, out of solidarity for Steve, if anything, his own heart in his throat.  The Soldier blinks once, twice, slowly, then turns towards the stitches below the blonde hairline, running up the side of his neck, purple splashed across cheekbones, slashed up.

\--

They should have -

\--

Steve sits, on the couch, hunched forward, hands wringing, brows furrowed.

The Soldier sits, on the floor, head bowed, hair brushing Steve’s knee, grazing a jawline, sharp.

Steve reaches forward, hesitates.

The Soldier stills.

Steve slowly opens his hand, extends his fingers, calloused and rough, waiting.

The Soldier sits, on the floor, head bowed, and there’s the slightest bit of moment, shift, leaning forward, and Steve feels a hard chin, stubble, skin, flesh, against his fingers, rough, calloused.

And then The Soldier looks up, Steve sees icy blue eyes, deep, cold, and his breath catches.

\--

They should have seen it coming, is the thing.

A grenade with it’s pin out, Stark would say, later, a bomb waiting to drop.

There are marks on the muzzle, indents in metal, like digging of nails and bite of teeth, (and blood, streaked along the barrel, the grip crushed, twisted,)

Clint picks up the pistol, sets it on the nightstand, surface empty, every object on it knocked to the floor.

Steve is on the floor, hands outstretched, cradling a head, fingers entwined with brown strands, breathing hard.

The Soldier looks at the floor, lips pursed, hands above his head, fingers interlocked. His cheek, right, is bloody, mangled.

Steve is on the floor, hands outstretched, one supporting the jaw of The Soldier and the other pressed to his right temple, teeth gritted, silently crying.

Natasha crouches, light fingers and gloves, and digs the bullet out, embedded in metal, nailed to a fractured skull.   

The Soldier doesn’t make a single sound.

\--

There’s a kiss, the first time, The Soldier relaxed and loose, Steve tense and terrified.

The Soldier blinks, slowly, looks at Steve, who is flushed, sweaty, gulping, messy hair, ripped up in his uniform.

“I missed you,” Steve says, and The Soldier blinks again, then looks, contemplative, eyes guarded and still, then leans forward and kisses Steve again.

\--

The first time The Soldier smiles, he smiles at Natasha.

It’s a quirk of lips, ever so slight, twitching, a ghost, gone in less than a second.

Natasha is surprised, shocked.

She doesn’t mention it.

\--

They should have seen it coming, is the thing.

There’s a shoelace, and piping, and a chair, tipped over.

The Soldier looks at the floor, lips pursed, hands above his head, fingers interlocked. There's a line of red around his throat.

Clint unties the lace, picks up the shoe, on the floor, and starts to re-lace it, aglets twisting in eyelets, one at a time, slowly.

Steve pulls The Soldier’s hands apart, sets them on his lap, and presses his lips to The Soldier’s forehead. The Soldier keeps his eyes trained to the ground.

Sam opens his mouth, pauses, thinks, closes it, shakes his head.

\--

(“I don’t know what to do,” Sam admits.

“You can’t always know. I never know,” Clint says.

“It’s my- it’s my job, to know what to do, for people like him,” Sam argues.

“Yes,” Tony says, gentle and soft, “but I can’t fix a phone that got run over by a car.”

“He’s not, he’s-” Sam says, pauses, then laughs bitterly, then, “he’s not a phone,” weak, desperate, shakey.

“No, he isn’t,” Bruce says.)

\--

Tony finds him, at the edge of the roof, looking down, and joins him, shoulders brushing.

“Steve,” Tony says, softly, and Steve looks at him, sighs, dips his chin, rests his cheek against a blazer sleeve.

Tony runs a hand through Steve’s hair and presses him close.

\--

Bruce finds him, at the edge of the roof, looking down, and joins him.

“Hey,” Bruce says, softly, and The Soldier doesn’t look up to look at him, continues to watch specks of light move across dark roads, grids of light stretching far into the distance, blurring yellows and oranges and whites, not a single visible star.

Bruce stays, until the dark at the edge of the sky dips into amber, and then The Soldier silently stands. Bruce doesn’t hear footsteps, but he hears the soft swinging of the door to the roof, the barely audible click as it closes shut.

\--

They see it coming, is the thing.

It is a broken fuse box, the wrong end of the wire.

Steve is screaming, screaming, (and crying,) he grips The Soldier hard and The Soldier lets him, rock back and forth and whisper frantic words and hushed sentences.

Tony looks distraught, hands wrapped around wire, gloved, and he looks to Natasha, to Clint, to Bruce, to Sam.

Steve is still sobbing, shaking, and The Winter Soldier lets him, keeps his head down, stays silent.

\--

(“He looked for,” Tony paused, “don’t tell Steve, The Soldier looked for, and he used, with the generator, the exact, exact voltage - down to the decimal, JARVIS calculated with his vitals, I don’t - If Steve hadn’t been there in time, he could have already been- I mean, was it a really lucky guess? How did he - how would he know?”

“We both know,” Natasha says. She doesn’t offer further explanation, and nobody asks.)

\--

They don’t see it coming, is the thing.

\--

They don’t-

\--

They see it coming, eventually-

\--

They don’t see it coming, in the form it takes - karma, retribution, the same treatment to many others under his scope, (magic,) worst nightmares flashing through fragmented minds.

The Soldier bleeds out, Steve’s palm stained red in his hair, kiss bitten lips and tongues fighting like a fervent prayer, a clean shot slightly offset, lashes brushing against tears and a bullet through a skull.

The Soldier’s grip goes lax, after that fingers uncurling from the pistol, and it falls, and hits the dirt, like a period at the end of a sentence.

Steve sets The Soldier down, slowly, cradling.

Steve looks up, into terrified brown eyes of a young girl, a teenager, wisps of red still curling in her hands, lips parted into a horrified cry.

“I, I don’t,” she says, and Steve picks up the shield, lips tasting of bitterness and saltiness and copper, shoulders steeled, eyes hard.  

“Where’s your brother?” Steve says, numb, cold.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice barely a whisper.

“Come on, kid,” he says, he puts the cowl back on his head, (a mask,) and presses a finger to the earpiece, to hear static and shouts and sirens, “we have a country to save.”

\--

(“He only ever said one phrase to me,” Steve says, pressed between Tony and Sam, knees tucked and head bowed, shoulders slumped, “once.”

Then he repeats a phrase, uncertain, Russian, short, clipped, Natasha’s eyes soften, Clint sinks bonelessly against her.

“That means Thank You,” she says.

\--

Wanda looks up, hands wringing, eyes pained, and whispers, “he could have- would have, probably, almost loved you.”

\--

Steve doesn’t cry.)

**Author's Note:**

> Summary: Similar to the original AU, the Winter Soldier drags Steve out of the Potomac. Not similar to the original AU, he then proceeds to attempt suicide a total of 4 times by shooting himself, hanging and electrocution, the first three attempts stopped by the Avengers. He succeeds the fourth time when Wanda Maximoff enters his mind as she did with the other Avengers in Age of Ultron, and he shoots himself in the head, again.


End file.
